


Letter to the Past

by Donthavesexwithsam



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Saaaddddddd, Super saaaaaadddd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donthavesexwithsam/pseuds/Donthavesexwithsam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wish Lovelace would have her own 'Am I Alone Now' segment. Then I realized that I occasionally write fanfiction so I could get that done myself.<br/>So I did that.<br/>Takes place between 'Who's There' and 'Pan-Pan'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letter to the Past

This is the personal log of Isabelle Lovelace, on day I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it of the Hephaestus Mission. Although I’m not really sure whether I still belong on this mission.

Hilbert just left. He said it’s going to be a while before I can move around the station again. He’s even said it will be a while before I can sit up for longer than five minutes without passing out.

But that’s okay I guess. I deserved this. This is all a consequence to my actions. Although, the fact that Hilbert’s is the only face I see some days is not optimal and also not entirely my mistake, but the fact that our station’s AI hates my guts because I killed her best friend is… terrible, and completely my fault. She’s right.

I killed Eiffel.

I killed Eiffel the same way I killed you. Maybe not literally, but I think you know what I mean.

I was thinking about you lately. When I was confronted with something, with a man and a bomb and a second chapter to a story that should have been finished long ago.

See, I used to think I was fearless.

When I was fifteen years old, you were sitting next to me, and you asked: “Bella, are you afraid of spiders?”

“No,” I replied. I wasn’t. I had never been.

“Oh,” You said. “I am.”

You were silent for a moment, before you frowned. “Then what are you afraid of?”

I remember crossing everything off on a list of cliché things people can be afraid of. Bears, clowns, the dark, heights, that one creepy teacher that always picks on you, cats, dogs, birds. I thought of fire, blood, ghosts, and those were, in my head, when I was fifteen, all the things a human being could possibly, maybe, be afraid of.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I remember telling you.

I’m fearless, I remember telling me.

“Oh,” You said, again. “Okay.”

You looked up to me then. I don’t know if you still do. I like to think that you still do.

Then your friend passed us. He excitedly told you about a nearby puppy. You ran off. Children are like that, I guess. Easily distracted.

A few weeks ago, when I had just reopened my eyes to the same sun I have been staring at for far too long now, I thought I was still like that. Fearless.

I was Isabelle Lovelace. I was the Captain of the U.S.S. Hephaestus, and I was going to go back to Earth, on my own terms, with my own rules. And one of those terms was that I was going to go back without scars. Without fear.

So I strapped a bomb to my heartbeat, and I entered my old home, my cursed land, where I had laughed and cried and loved, guns blazing. I was the boss. I was the Captain again.

And slowly I realized that maybe I wasn’t afraid of spiders, maybe I wasn’t afraid to spend hours alone in the dark, or high five creepy clowns on Halloween. Maybe I wasn’t afraid of ghosts in the night, and blood when you bled. But I was afraid.

Fear cannot be defined. When you are a child, fear is easy. You pick a thing you don’t like and you’re done. But when you grow older, the world grows scarier. When you grow older, you’re not afraid of that abandoned house on your street anymore. You find out that you’re afraid of things that, like fear itself, lack materialization.

You realize that you’re afraid of abandonment. You’re afraid of being alone and afraid of being rejected.

Fear, as an emotion, is in many ways not rational. I might not be afraid of Eiffel, but when he creeps up behind me and makes me jump, I am scared. For a brief moment, the nanosecond that I do not know what is going on, I am afraid. Until I realize it’s just Eiffel and I can go on with my day.

I realized this when I jumped in front of Minkowski to save her from that wayward piece of shrapnel. The second my instincts decided to push my body forward to save her life, I realized that I was not, and had never been, fearless.

You were the fearless one.

When I was younger, when I was in the air-force, working my way up the ranks, I thought you were foolish. You didn’t have the ambition to study, but instead did what you wanted. You saw the world, worked at a thousand different places. You never thought about tomorrow, about your dog and your partner, your children and your white picket fence.

“Maybe one day,” You would say when I asked about your plans. “But the future is now. My goal in life is to be happy, so I will make myself happy. Does happiness for me include a study? Not right now. Right now happiness includes a job in a bar and almost enough savings to go to India.”

“Oh,” That moment, I felt like the child.

It was only much later I realized I had essentially asked you the same question.

You asked if I was afraid of spiders.

I asked if you were afraid of what was to come.

We both said no, and we were both speaking the truth.

And it took me too long to realize. I regret that, and I’m sorry.

It took me so long to realize, that it cost me you, it cost me Hui, Fourier and Fisher, and most tragically, it cost me Eiffel.

It took me so many years, and one, too long, Hephaestus mission, to realize that it wasn’t me who was the fearless one, with my courage, my recklessness and dauntlessness, but you, who made decisions, unafraid of what was next.

Just like Eiffel, you would have jumped out of the station to save us too, thinking about the potential risks, but choosing that the lives of your friends would be more important than your own.

I was never like that. Because that is true fearlessness. That is true sacrifice.

So when I jumped to save my friend, I finally saw that valor isn’t not being afraid of scary things. It takes guts to not be afraid of the consequences of your actions.

Fearlessness is living in the now, and I, for one, am always worrying about the future.

I used to think I was fearless. But you made me realize that I am very much afraid.

I love you, little one. Talk to you soon.


End file.
